I READ with interest the report on the lack of vocations in Ireland at this time. I have long been convinced the problem of the lack of ordained ministry in the Church is that we are resolutely refusing to reflect that our model of the ministry does not reflect that presented to us by the Lord in the Bible and the practice of the early Church.
Priests were chosen from the leaders of the people, often as a result of consultation with the people. (Still in theory, as the ordination rite declares today.) Priests arose from the community. They were not imposed upon them. It was a foreign missionary priest, ministering to 30,000 people in 12 mission stations, who declared that wherever there was a community of the faithful, there would be a person or people who would emerge as leaders.
They should be ordained to have the help of the sacrament in their leadership and to give proper sacramental life to the community. That is the model of ordained ministry presented in scriptures and by the early Church.
It simply cannot be the will of the Lord to have little ordained ministry in His Church and a flock deprived of its proper sacramental life.
Fr Chris Benyon, Seaford, East Sussex
